BlBLIOPHILY 

OR 
BOOKLOVE 


BIBLIOPHILY 

OR 

BOOKLOVE 


F---—  --J 


BY 
JAMES  F.  WILLIS 


BOSTON   AND    NBW    YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  CO 

MDCCCCXXI 


COPYRIGHT,   19*1,  BY  JAMES  F.  WILLIS 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


TO 

S.  R.  C. 

AND 

C.  A.  L. 

LOYAL  AND    STEADFAST 


2040702 


CONTENTS 

I.    BOOKLOVE  1 

II.  BOOKS  9 

III.  GREAT  BOOKS  20 

IV.  BOOK-GATHERING  29 
V.  BOOK-READING  46 

VI.  BOOK-MAKING  68 


BIBLIOPHILY 

i 

BOOKLOVE 

IT  is  booklove  that  enables  us  to  perceive 
whatever  is  true  and  beautiful  in  books,  and 
it  is  a  passport  to  the  purest  and  the  perfect- 
est  pleasures  possible  to  men.  We  are  never 
really  well-bred  until  we  have  attained  abil- 
ity to  know  and  to  love  real  books :  it  is  al- 
most all  a  matter  of  education  —  of  self- 
education;  and  the  completer  the  culture, 
the  deeper-rooted  the  appreciation  and  the 
greater  the  influence.  Booklove  is  a  mark 
of  refinement,  and  we  are  only  fractions 
of  men  without  it.  Frederic  Faber  says, 
"Booklove  has  broadened  many  a  narrow 
soul;  many  a  close,  stifled,  unwindowed 
heart  has  it  filled  with  mountain-air  and  sun- 
shine, thus  making  room  for  God  and  man 
where  there  was  no  room  before."  Next  to 


2          BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

the  poet,  the  booklover  is  the  richest  and  the 
happiest  of  men,  however  humble  his  sta- 
tion may  be:  it  keeps  him  from  vulgar  com- 
pany and  pastimes,  and  is  the  most  effica- 
cious means  for  attaining  all  the  amenities 
of  culture.  We  marvel  at  the  breeding  and 
the  scholarship  of  the  men  of  three  centuries 
ago,  and  at  the  dignity  of  their  expression; 
but  it  is  all  mainly  attributable  to  their  book- 
love:  they  did  not  keep  the  company  of  so 
many  books  as  we ;  but  they  kept  better  com- 
pany, understood  them  better,  and  loved 
them  as  friends:  their  manners  were  courtly, 
and  there  is  dignity  in  both  their  diction  and 
their  phrasing  because  "they  lunched  with 
Plutarch  and  supped  with  Plato."  By  their 
very  occupation,  book  lovers  as  well  as  book- 
sellersare  £r0W-minded :  their  constant  com- 
panionship with  books  gives  them  a  liber- 
ality through  which  they  view  clearly  and 
dispassionately  every  phase  of  life  and  every 
dispensation  of  Providence;  they  are  not 
always  what  the  world  knows  as  practical, 


BOOKLOVE  3 

for  spiritual  development  seldom  produces 
dexterity  in  the  baser  organs.  While  book- 
love  is  not  a  common  trait  and  lack  of  it  is 
common  even  among  collegians,  there  is  no 
greater  drawback  for  J0w/-education  than  to 
be  born  deaf  to  the  persuasive  influences  of 
worthy  books.  Nootherfriendshipcan  quite 
equal  that  of  the  books  through  which  our 
spiritual  nature  and  our  character  have  been 
advanced:  Cicero  preferred  to  part  with 
all  he  owned  rather  than  not  be  permitted 
to  live  and  die  among  his  books:  Bishop 
Fenelon  said  that  not  for  an  empire  would 
he  part  with  his  books  or  his  booklove:  that 
master-historian  Gibbon  said  that  booklove 
meant  more  to  him  than  all  the  riches  of  The 
Indies:  Macaulay  preferred  to  be  a  beggar 
with  a  love  for  books  than  to  be  a  million- 
aire without  them :  when  Scott  returned  to 
Abbotsford  to  die  and  was  wheeled  into  his 
library,  he  burst  into  tears  as  he  beheld  those 
lifelong  friends  upon  his  bookshelves:  when 
Southey's  intellect  failed  and  he  was  no 


4         BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

longer  able  to  read,  he  would  walk  about  his 
bookshelves  gently  stroking  or  caressing 
those  friends  of  his  happier  days. 

Booklove  supplies  each  day  and  each  hour 
with  an  endless  stream  of  independent  and 
rational  pleasure,  and  we  need  not  hope  for 
anything  really  worthy  of  a  Christian  or  an 
American  from  the  man  who  does  not  at 
times  love  to  stay  in  his  own  room  in  the  en- 
nobling company  of  the  great  men  who  live 
in  books.  We  all  are  made  or  marred  by  the 
company  we  keep,  whether  of  men  or  of 
books.  No  darkness  from  without  can  ever 
obscure  the  light  and  the  sweetness  within, 
which  is  forever  the  portion  of  the  man  who 
loves  books.  Washington  Irving  says  that 
it  is  only  the  booklover  who  knowshow  dear 
these  si  lent  yet  eloquent  companions  of  pure 
thoughts  and  innocent  hours  become  in  the 
time  of  adversity  —  when  worldly  things 
grow  drossy,  when  friends  grow  cold  and 
intimates  become  vapidly  civil  and  com- 
monplace. Next  to  the  glory  of  writing  a 


BOOKLOVE  5 

worthy  book  is  a  taste  for  the  dainties  among 
books,  a  discernment  in  appreciating  good 
books,  and  a  hunger  for  collecting  them.  It 
is  the  caprice  of  vulgarians  to  sneer  at  him 
who  inclines  toward  making  books  the  chief 
of  hisfriends, to  surround  himselfwith  them, 
and  to  live  happy  in  their  midst:  perhaps  it 
is  because  they  feel  that  his  choice  is  a  re- 
flection upon  their  cheaper  tastes  that  they 
square  themselves  by  dubbing  him  biblio- 
mane—  book-mad;  Ruskin  observes  that 
they  do  not  call  the  vulgarian  house-buyer 
or  horse-buyer  house-mud,  or  borse-mad. 

It  is  by  being  in  the  presence  of  books 
from  childhood  that  a  love  for  them  is  un- 
consciously acquired;  and,  in  a  child's  evo- 
lution, the  library  is  a  far  more  important 
place  than  the  nursery:  whoever  is  not  a 
booklover  before  he  reaches  manhood  shall 
hardly  attain  it  afterward — disuse  atrophies 
this  power.  Dr.  Holmessays  that  all  menare 
afraid  of  books  who  have  not  tumbled  about 
among  them  from  infancy;  they  may  not 


6          BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

read  the  greatest  among  them  While  growing 
to  man's  stature,  but  virtue  passes  through 
their  parchment  and  leather  garments  when- 
ever they  touch  them,  as  the  precious  drug 
sweated  through  the  handle  of  the  bat  in  the 
Arabian  story:  such  men  are  always  at  home 
wherever  they  smell  the  invigorating  fra- 
grance of  Russia  or  Morocco;  and  few  that 
are  otherwise  built  ever  seem  at  home  in  a 
library — the  beginning  of  booklove  is  of- 
tener  an  endowment  than  an  acquirement. 
To  become  entirely  worthy  of  our  Amer- 
ican manhood,  we  must  live  among  books 
and  live  lovingly  among  them:  the  soul  of 
man  has  nowhere  else  so  stamped  his  image 
as  in  this  world  of  books;  and,  to  be  fair  of 
head  and  heart,  we  must  find  a  home  within 
thisworld.  The  wants  that  books  supplycan 
be  known  only  by  living  lovingly  among 
them,  and  he  always  reverences  them  who 
thus  lives  among  them.  Every  advancing 
soul  quickly  perceives  the  heritage  he  has  in 
books;  he  is  always  most  at  ease  in  their 


BOOKLOVE  7 

company,  and  always  prepared  to  forego  any 
other  pleasure  that  he  may  dip  into  all  the 
truth  and  the  beauty  that  is  held  between  the 
covers  of  some  true  book :  it  isonly  the  sleepy 
or  the  dead  soul  that  finds  books  a  barren 
wilderness.  The  man  who  in  these  days  has 
found  no  book  to  love  ishardly  worth  know- 
ing; he  has  no  message  for  us  that  can  in  any 
way  advance  our  character-side  or  incline  us 
toward  the  noble  things  of  life;  in  the  things- 
of-the-soul,  he  has  not  risen  above  the  peas- 
ant prior  to  Gutenberg — so,  what 's  the  use  ? ! 
The/>Az/«-people  are  the  pillars  of  every 
democracy:  what  they  are  decides  the  strength 
or  the  weakness  of  our  nation;  and  nothing 
can  conduce  more  to  their  being  somebody 
and  to  their  doing  something,  than  to  help 
them  early  to  become  acquainted  with  the 
goodznd  the  better  and  the  best  among  books, 
to  inspire  them  to  make  books  their  steadfast 
friends  and  lifelong  companions,  and  to  es- 
tablish in  them  the  conviction  that  even 
illiteracy  is  preferable  to  bad,  worse,  worst 


8          BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

books.  Next  to  inculcating  patriotism  and 
the  spirit  of  our  America,  American  teachers 
have  no  other  task  nearly  so  important  as  to 
create  an  understandings/*  and  an  apprecia- 
tion/or the  books-that-fljv-books.  Without 
booklove,  any  teacher  is  a  menace  to  pupils 
— if  he  has  not  read,  he  never  can  infuse  the 
spirit  of  r/££/-reading. 


II 

BOOKS 

HE  is  the  blessed  man  who  lives  a  hidden  and 
workful  life,  nourished  by  the  love  of  one  or 
two  really  worthy  women  and  by  the  friend- 
ship of  one  or  two  real  men,  devoted  to  the 
practice  of  goodness,  and  to  the  search  for 
the  truth  and  the  beauty  of  life  through 
books:  above  all  other  things  in  the  world, 
his  books  shall  help  him  to  discover  what  he 
is,  whither  he  is  going,  how  he  is  related  to 
the  world  and  his  fellows. 

The  supreme  aim  of  books  is  to  help  us  to 
make  the  most  of  life,  and  men  of  vision  use 
them  mainly  for  this  end.  They  are  not  a  lux- 
ury, but  an  essential  of  life :  what  food  is  to 
the  body,  books  are  to  the  soul;  and  it  is  im- 
possible to  overrate  them.  Not  all  men  have 
the  j0#/-qualities  to  get  the  most  out  of 
books;  but,  for  all  that  have  adequately  cul- 
tured soul-powers,  it  is  among  the  chief  of 


1O       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

their  patriotic  and  religious  duties  to  know 
them — to  know  them  is  to  love  them,  and 
those  who  love  both  live  right  and  do  right. 
Towards  making  God's  world  a  happier 
world,  the  printing-press  has  preceded  plat- 
form and  pulpit.  Through  the  invention  of 
printing,  the  poorest  man  may  to-day  own 
the  richest  books;  and  they  are  the  Alad- 
din's Lamp  that  can  turn  his  humble  home 
into  a  prince's  palace.  The  modern  world  is 
not  spiritually  superior  to  the  ancient;  but 
it  is  superior  from  its  spiritual  powers  plus 
its  heritage  of  two  thousand  years  transmit- 
ted to  it  through  books,  which  it  never  could 
have  had  but  for  the  beneficent  invention  of 
printing:  so,  we  can  never  think  of  Guten- 
berg without  the  utmost  reverence  and  grat- 
itude for  his  masterly  invention. 

How  a  man  appreciates  books  is  a  test  of 
his  capacity  for  higher  conduct  and  higher 
life.  The  noble  books  shall  dignify  us;  the 
/gnoble shall  debauch  us:  whether  they  shall 
dignify  or  debauch  depends  upon  our  he- 


BOOKS  11 

redity  and  environment  and  education  — 
especially  upon  our  education.  True  books 
are  as  difficult  to  find  as  true  men;  bad  and 
vulgar  books  are  as  obtrusive  and  as  ubiq- 
uitous as  bad  and  vulgar  men.  It  is  only  an 
alert  soul  that  can  truly  understand  books- 
that-^rd'-books,  and  become  jo#/-enriched 
through  them;  it  is  only  when  our  breeding 
both  natural  and  ideal  has  enabled  us  to  un- 
derstand the  language  and  the  indispensable 
uses  of  books  that  we  begin  to  grow  in  a  big 
manly  way.  Mrs.  Browning  says,  "Earth  is 
crammed  with  heaven,  and  every  common 
bush  is  afire  with  God ;  but  only  he  who  sees 
takes  off  his  shoes."  For  light  to  perceive  all 
this  God  and  heaven  in  our  midst  and  to 
profit  from  it,  we  must  turn  mainly  to  the 
books  that  thrill  with  light  and  power. 

The  man  who  does  not  keep  book-com- 
pany and  does  not  keep  improvinghisbook- 
surroundings  rarely  yearns  for  intellectual 
and  moral  surroundings.  To  expect  the  vul- 
gar to  value  the  best  in  life  and  in  books  is 


12       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

to  expect  what  never  has  been :  vulgarians 
are  vulgar  just  because  they  are  contented 
merely  with  what  excites  curiosity  and  af- 
fords amusement,  or  with  what  pleases  one  or 
anotheroftheir  sensualities.  Like  everything 
else  that  is  worth  having,  book-appreciation 
is  a  matter  of  education;  and,  for  our  high- 
est interests,  both  college  and  church  shall 
never  be  betteremployed  than  in  inculcating 
the  importance  of  keeping  the  company  of 
real  books  and  of  improving  book-surround- 
ings. Our  choice  of  books  is  always  a  test  of 
our  manhood  and  of  ourculture.  A  bad  book 
corrupts  even  more  easily  and  quickly  than 
a  bad  man,  for  we  will  often  listen  to  a  bad 
book  when  we  would  spurn  the  talk  of  a  bad 
man.  Bad  books  are  dangerous  because  the 
soul  generally  shrinks  to  the  meaner  compa- 
ny that  gathers  there  to  hatch  conspiracies 
against  our  better-self:  in  all  companion- 
ships, the  lower  tends  to  draw  the  higher 
down  —  we  get  courage  and  strength  and 
gladness  from  looking  #/>,  seldom  from  look- 


BOOKS  13 

ing  down.  Whenever  we  are  interested  in  an 
inferior  book,  our  soul  lives  in  an  alley.  The 
good  book  is  a  thing-of-beauty,  and  a  thing- 
of-beauty  is  a  thing-of-God:  it  inspires  hope 
and  courage,  it  leads  to  lofty  simplicity  and 
robust  virtues,  it  refreshes  and  nourishes  our 
soul  by  feeding  it  upon  dainty  and  whole- 
some soul-food  which  is  more  abundant  in  a 
worthy  book  than  anywhere  else.  The  good 
book  sustains  us  to  endure  life,  and  to  get 
the  best  out  of  life ;  it  breaks  for  us  the  poor 
hobble  of  everyday  sights  and  sounds  and 
habits  and  tasks  which  tether  both  our  think- 
ingand  ourfeeling.  Every  other  but  a  worthy 
book  does  something  to  unman  us;  all  that 
a  man  should  ever  care  for  a  book  is  just 
what  it  is  worth  to  him.  Trash  shall  not  be 
produced  when  trash  does  not  sell;  and  this 
shall  come  when  literature  shall  be  given  its 
proper  place  in  school,  not  only  for  soul- 
development,  but  also  as  a  most  easily- 
opened  door  to  history  and  art  and  science 
and  morals. 


14       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

The  books-that-rfr<?-books!!  There  is  lit- 
tle gold  in  the  book-mine  to-day:  it  consists 
mainly  of  clay  and  stones!  We,  too,  may 
complain  with  Charles  Lamb  that  it  moves 
our  spleen  to  see  things  in  books'  clothing 
perched  upon  shelves  like  false  saints,  thrust- 
ing out  the  legitimate  occupants — usurpers 
of  true  shrines,  intruders  into  the  sanctuary: 
to  reach  up  hoping  to  find  some  Steele  or 
some  kind-hearted  play-book,  and  come  bolt 
upon  some  Adam  Smith  or  some  well-ar- 
ranged assortment  of  blockheaded  cyclo- 
paedias set  forth  in  an  array  of  Russia  or 
Morocco,  when  a  tithe  of  that  good  leather 
could  comfortably  clothe  our  shivering 
book-friends  who  have  worn  their  raiment 
threadbare  through  devoted  service  to  us. 
"  I  never  see  these  impostors,"  says  Lamb, 
"but  I  long  to  strip  them  and  to  clothe  my 
ragged  veterans  in  their  spoils."  Lowell  says 
that  in  books  we  must  not  (like  the  sailors 
of  Ulysses)  take  bags  of  wind  for  sacks  of 
gold;  or  our  little  lifeboat  shall  soon  be 


BOOKS  15 

driven  far  from  our  proper  port  by  these 
winds,  as  was  the  unfortunate  Ulysses. 

It  is  the  belief  to-day  that  general  spiritual 
culture  far  excels  mere  intellectual  culture. 
Greek  and  Latin  have  always  been  service- 
able for  purposes  of  intellectual  gymnastics; 
but,  for  general  spiritual  culture,  modern  lit- 
erature surpasses  both,  and  to-day  not  even 
the  moderately  wise  think  of  burying  them- 
selves in  a  Greek  or  Latin  urn,  as  did  the 
scholars  of  The  Renascence.  English  is  the 
oldest  and  the  ripest  of  all  the  modern  liter- 
atures; and,  along  with  The  French,  it  has 
sustained  a  higher  average  of  excellence  fora 
longer  time  than  other  modern  literatures, 
and  has  put  into  modern  and  Christian  form 
the  best  that  ancient  and  pagan  literature 
ever  had:  whoever  masters  English  literature 
unconsciously  receives  into  his  culture  the 
substantial  literary  life  of  Palestine,  Greece, 
and  Rome.  French  books  seem  to  have  been 
written  just  for  Paris;  but  we  who  speak  the 
tongue  of  Shakespeare  are  heirs  to  a  litera- 


l6      BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

ture  that  has  circled  the  earth  with  its  music 
and  messages  —  it  seems  to  have  been  writ- 
ten for  all  the  world.  Greek  was  admirably 
adapted  for  literary  purposes;  but  English 
is  not  one  whit  behind  Greek  for  such  pur- 
poses, even  if  it  does  lack  economy  and  self- 
control.  We  shall  be  coming  into  our  own 
when  chief  among  American  school-books 
shall  be  The  Bible,  Shakespeare  and  Ten- 
nyson, Scott  and  Fenimore-Cooper,  Motley 
and  Parkman,  Emerson  and  Lowell.  The 
Bible  concerns  itself  with  life,  and  literature 
is  permeated  with  illustrations  from  it  and 
allusions  to  it;  without  familiarity  with 
The  Bible,  modern  books  are  almost  incom- 
prehensible. In  Shakespeare  and  Tennyson 
can  be  found  all  the  materials  for  deep  and 
genuine  culture;  and  it  is  essential  to  know 
them  for  their  poetic  qualities  and  tender 
sentiments,  and  for  their  delightful  diction 
and  phrasing :  it  has  been  said  that  no  mod- 
ern life  can  be  full  unless  a  myriad  of  days 
and  nights  have  been  given  to  Shakespeare 


BOOKS  17 

—  he  is  "our  most  rhythmic  genius,  our 
acutest  intellect,  our  profoundest  imagina- 
tion, our  healthiest  understanding,  who  ar- 
rived at  the  full  development  of  hispowers  at 
the  moment  when  the  material  in  which  he 
worked  (that  wonderful  composite,  called 
English)  was  in  its  freshest  perfection." 
Worthy  stories  give  imaginative  pleasure; 
and  they  do  the  work  of  the  stage,  the  pul- 
pit, the  philosopher,  and  the  poet;  yet,  there 
is  far  too  much  that  is  deciduous  about 
stories,  little  that  is  perennial,  and  a  moun- 
tain with  qualities  that  can  never  entitle 
them  to  rank  as  literature.  We  don't  realize 
the  greatness  and  the  variety  and  the  possi- 
bility of  human-nature  because  our  lens  of 
human-nature  interests  is  too  contracted; 
great  fiction  broadens  this  lens  perhaps  more 
than  all  other  things.  Nobody  can  tell  a  story 
so  well  as  the  best  of  the  story-tellers;  with 
the  Scotts  and  the  Feni more-Coopers  as  our 
story-tellers,  we  are  on  safe  ground.  Ideal 
history  is  a  mixture  of  poetry  and  philoso- 


l8       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

phy;  it  is  the  divine  Book  of  Revelation, 
and  great  men  are  its  texts;  it  is  mainly  the 
biography  of  a  few  imperial  men  —  of  the 
world's  real  aristocrats  upon  whom  the 
destiny  of  humanity  always  hangs  and  with 
whom  all  improvement  begins.  In  the  evo- 
lution of  a  patriotic  American,  history-influ- 
ences are  an  essential :  the  better  We  Ameri- 
cans know  history  and  sociology,  the  better 
we  shall  understand  and  appreciate  The 
United  States  which  has  been  called  The 
Flower-of-The-Ages.  A  great  man's  biogra- 
phy has  greater  educational  and  inspira- 
tional value  than  the  best  story  that  has  ever 
been  written,  or  the  best  sermon  that  has 
ever  been  preached ;  and  whoever  intends  to 
make  the  most  of  himself  must  know  inti- 
mately the  lives  of  a  few  great  men,  whether 
through  history  or  biography,  for  there  is 
no  greater  incentive  to  worthy  living.  Bi- 
ography tells  what  has  been  done,  what  can 
be  done,  what  ought  to  be  done.  Somebody 
says  that  autobiographies  have  been  writ- 


BOOKS  19 

ten  mainly  by  men  who  were  more  inter- 
esting to  themselves  than  to  other  people; 
but  Benvenuto  Cellini,  Benjamin  Franklin, 
and  John  Woolman  have  left  us  classics  in 
their  autobiographies.  Horace  Greeley  said 
that  in  all  Franklin's  achievements  he  de- 
served most  and  best  from  mankind  for  his 
"Autobiography";  Charles  Lamb  said  that 
Woolman's  "Journal"  should  be  learned 
by  heart. 


Ill 

GREAT  BOOKS 

IT  has  been  said  that  modern  writing  is  largely 
a  clamorous  and  turbulent  stream  dashing 
among  the  rocks  of  criticism,  over  the  peb- 
bles of  the  world's  daily  events,  trying  to 
make  itself  seen  and  heard  amid  the  hoarse 
cries  of  politics  and  the  rumbling  wheels  of 
traffic :  a  classic  is  a  still  lakelet,  a  mountain 
tarn  fed  by  springs  that  never  fail ;  its  surface 
is  never  ruffled  by  storm,  and  it  is  always 
smiling  a  welcome  to  the  visitor. 

The  Great  Books  make  up  the  thing  that 
the  schools  call  Literature.  The  Great  Books 
have  been  forged  at  the  heart  and  fashioned 
by  the  head  of  Godlike  men;  they  are  the 
children  of  those  whose  life  was  a  glorious 
service,  and  whose  memory  is  a  benediction; 
they  are  the  embodiment  of  lives  which  were 
devoted  to  the  meditation  of  truth  and  to  the 
pursuit  of  beauty;  they  are  the  criticisms 


GREAT  BOOKS  21 

of  life  made  by  those  who  were  in  love  with 
life,  and  who  had  the  deepest  convictions 
about  the  possibilities  of  life.  The  Great 
Books  are  treasuries  of  golden  thought  in 
golden  words,  the  storehouses  of  the  world's 
spiritual  riches,  the  worthiest  and  the  most 
wonderful  of  all  the  things  that  have  been 
made  by  men ;  they  are  caskets  that  contain 
the  attar  of  head  and  heart,  and  of  every- 
thing that  is  most  enriching  and  ennobling; 
they  are  windows  that  discover  boundless 
fields  for  soul-refreshment  and  for  soul-ex- 
pansion, and  the  looms  which  rapidly  weave 
men's  inner  garments;  they  are  hives  of  great 
and  inspiring  thought  and  true  love,  foun- 
tains of  ideas  and  ideals,  homes  of  all  truth 
and  beauty  and  love  and  light  and  power 
and  freedom;  they  are  the  repositories  of 
universal  experience,  the  wisest  advisers  and 
the  truest  friends,  perennial  inspirers  with- 
out whose  light  the  world  should  still  be 
in  darkness. 

What  can  these  Great  Books  called  liter- 


22       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

ature  do  for  us*?  It  is  their  mission  to  form 
the  intellect  and  strengthen  the  soul-powers : 
De  Quincey  calls  the  former  knowledge-\\\.- 
erature,  and  the  latter  /ww^r-literature.  The 
Great  Books  have  always  come  from  the 
heart :  their  authors  have  written  them  be- 
cause they  could  not  help  it:  little  men  so 
often  write  just  to  say  something;  big  men 
never  write  until  they  have  something  to 
say:  the  big  men  write  what  Thoreau  calls 
"  The  Eternities  " ;  the  little  men  write  what 
he  calls  "The  Times."  A  great  book  is  al- 
ways better  to  know  than  a  great  man,  for  it 
is  always  the  best  part  of  some  great  man. 
To  know  the  great  man  is  not  always  to  have 
an  access  of  soul-power  through  knowing 
him  :  Hawthorne  says  that  it  is  not  for  the 
best  interests  of  the  world  to  know  too  inti- 
mately the  lives  of  its  great  men;  but  to 
know  Great  Books  is  to  acquire  soul-enrich- 
ment from  each  intercourse  with  them,  yet 
to  escape  the  compensatory  weaknesses  of 
their  authors'  genius.  The  majority  of  us  are 


GREAT  BOOKS  23 

from  humble  beginnings  with  an  insuffi- 
ciency of  the  breeding  and  the  environment 
and  the  education  that  contribute  to  the 
amenities  that  entitle  us  to  commingle  with 
the  living  great  men  and  women ;  hence,  it 
is  only  through  the  Great  Books  that  almost 
all  of  us  can  ever  come  to  know  great  men 
and  share  their  influences  —  and  life  can 
never  be  complete  without  the  influences  of 
the  best  society.  Lowell  says,  "As  thrills  of 
long-hushed  tones  live  in  the  viol,  so  our 
soul  grows  fine  with  keen  vibrations  from 
the  touch  divine  of  noble  natures  gone."  In 
Great  Books,  great  men  talk  to  us,  give  us 
most  precious  thought  in  most  precious 
language,  and  pour  their  souls  into  ours :  by 
their  ideas,  they  bring  us  freedom;  and 
through  their  ideas,  they  bring  us  expansion: 
the  lightning  of  their  great  thoughts  and 
feelings  shows  us  the  way  to  heroic  life, 
which  we  never  can  find  by  any  other  means. 
The  Great  Books  are  fatal  to  low  standards, 
to  self-complacency,  to  narrowness  and  dis- 


24      BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BOOKLOVE 

honesty  of  every  sort :  they  appeal  to  the 
best  that  is  in  us,  and  answer  our  demand  for 
what  is  best :  they  give  a  voice  to  our  own 
indistinct  thoughts  and  to  the  things  we  are 
yearning  for:  through  them  we  catch  the 
spirit  of  the  holiest  and  the  wisest  men  that 
have  ever  walked  this  earth:  they  call  forth 
our  deepest  needs,  inspire  confidence  in  our- 
selves, and  impel  us  to  nourish  our  soul  with 
truth  and  beauty  and  love :  they  reveal  the 
charm  of  a  noble  and  heroic  life :  they  kindle 
a  desire  for  the  strength  and  the  delights  of 
the  good  and  the  wise,  and  strengthen  our 
will  to  strive  for  goodness  and  wisdom.  If 
we  will  only  put  ourself  in  a  receptive  mood 
toward  this  literature,  the  whole  human  race 
will  speak  to  us  through  Great  Books.  For 
the  purposes  of  correct  culture,  Great  Books 
surpass  all  the  homes  and  the  schools  in  the 
world,  for  they  have  power  to  exalt  beyond 
all  other  powers  known  to  man.  There  is 
only  one  escape  from  being  always  a  very 
limited  creature  —  to  know  the  best  of  the 


GREAT  BOOKS  25 

thoughts  and  the  feelings  of  the  supreme 
souls  of  the  world,  through  companton-friend- 
ship  with  Great  Books :  it  is  only  the  men 
who  have  a  large  acquaintance  with  them 
and  a  deep  abiding  friendship  for  them  that 
are  able  manfully  to  deal  with  manlike  and 
Godlike  things.  We  can  never  get  broad 
culture  from  a  narrow  circle :  for  this  broad 
culture,  we  must  lay  hold  of  the  Great  Books 
with  both  hands ;  and  we  shall  find  them  in- 
teresting and  profitable  wherever  we  shall 
touch  them.  Without  the  depth  and  the 
breadth  and  the  genuineness  which  we  get 
in  so  large  a  measure  from  friendship  with 
the  Great  Books,  a  man's  best  work  can  in 
these  days  never  come  out  of  him.  Those 
who  browse  among  Great  Books  are  seldom 
the  slaves  of  the  gross  passions,  for  the  Great 
Books  set  the  intellectual  atmosphere  in 
vibration  and  stir  the  heart.  Through  Great 
Books,  we  get  an  ever-widening  meaning 
and  beauty  in  life ;  they  are  as  essential  in 
the  building  a  real  man  as  lactation,  denti- 


26       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

tion,  and  puberty.  With  the  Great  Books  as 
our  companion-friends,  we  proceed  through 
life  with  an  open  and  receptive  soul,  with 
increasing  hospitality  for  each  new  thought 
and  feeling,  with  an  ever-firmer  faith  in  God 
and  man,  in  conscience  and  in  duty.  "We 
go  to  them  first,"  says  Ruskin,  "for  clear 
sight;  then  we  abide  with  them  as  friends 
because  of  their  just  and  mighty  emotions." 
And  all  these  things  is  what  Great  Books, 
or  literature^  shall  do  for  us  when  careful  and 
complete  culture  of  head  and  heart  have 
made  us  capable  of  understanding  their  mar- 
velous messages.  "The  Great  Books  grind 
no  corn  for  the  body ;  they  weigh  only  as 
thistle-down  in  the  great  ^«j/'«<?jj-scales  of 
life;  but  they  lift  the  soul  to  higher  realms, 
and  it  is  as  important  to  keep  the  soul  alive 
as  to  keep  the  body — it  is  j0#/-life  that  gives 
all  its  value  to  body-\\fe"  Cato's  advice  to 
consort  only  with  the  best  is  especially  good 
advice  as  to  book-associates:  the  common 
books  may  afford  enjoyment,  if  we  are  cheap 


GREAT  BOOKS  27 

enough  to  wish  for  anything  so  plebeian  as 
mere  enjoyment;  but  it  is  only  the  books 
called  literature  —  the  Great  Books  —  that 
can  enrich  our  life:  the  books  that  inspire 
and  enforce  are  far  more  needful  than  those 
that  instruct  and  amuse — a  man's  book- 
company  is  an  index  of  his  soul. 

But  the  Great  Books  are  not  for  every- 
body: there  are  only  few  who  learn  the  high- 
est use  of  books  even  after  ///Hong  study; 
there  are  fewer  men  in  college  who  are  capa- 
ble of  qualifying  in  literature-courses,  than 
in  anything  else.  The  high  things  of  life  are 
perceptible  only  by  those  who  have  climbed 
to  high  places  through  the  education  of  their 
soul-powers — more  of  us  seem  to  be  reach- 
ing for  the  high  sensualities  than  for  the  high 
spiritualities!  In  these  days  of  innumerable 
schools  and  colleges,  there  are  few  who  have 
so  educated  head  and  heart  that  they  are  able 
to  grasp  the  import  of  even  one  Great  Book. 
The  Great  Books  are  only  for  souls  that  are 
akin  to  the  men  whose  thought  and  love 


28       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

have  made  them;  they  are  sources  of  wisdom 
only  for  those  whom  observation  and  expe- 
rience and  reflection  and  education  have 
made  wise.  Ruskin  says  that  the  Great  Books 
are  the  gateway  to  a  great  city  of  sleeping 
kings  who  will  wake  for  us  and  talk  to  us  if 
we  only  know  the  incantation  of  heart  that 
shall  awake  them.  Without  this  beart-m- 
cantation,  we  may  open  their  marble  en- 
trance-gates, and  wander  among  these  old 
kings  in  their  repose,  and  finger  the  robes 
they  lie  in,  and  stir  the  crowns  upon  their 
heads;  but  they  shall  have  no  message  for 
us.  Just  to  know  the  message  of  these  great 
kings  and  to  be  able  to  profit  by  their  mes- 
sage is  worth  more  than  all  the  labor  of  a 
///<ftime  of  j0«/-education  in  preparation  — 
more  than  all  things  else,  Great  Books,  or 
literature,  inspires  us  for  the  highest  possi- 
bilities of  head  and  heart  and  character;  and 
they  are  powerful  spurs  to  heroic  life:  they 
impel  us  to  be  and  to  become,  to  dare  and 
to  do. 


IV 
BOOK-GATHERING 

THE  company  we  keep  among  men  is  not 
always  an  index  of  our  character-equip- 
ment, forthis  is  not  always  a  matterof  choice; 
but  a  man's  bookshelves  are  always  an  index 
of  what  he  is.  There  is  no  man  who  provides 
for  people,  so  valuable  to  the  world  as  he 
who  makes  a  great  book;  and  next  to  him 
is  the  man  who  buys  it  for  himself,  and  takes 
it  as  a  friend  and  companion  of  his  leisure. 
There  is  a  dignity  of  culture  which  lives 
only  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  library:  it  leaves 
its  mark  upon  the  cultured,  just  as  eating 
and  drinking  and  the  other  sensualities  leave 
their  marks  upon  the  voluptuary.  The  great- 
est books  are  within  the  reach  of  all;  "and 
we  may  put  Parnassian  singing-birds  within 
our  chambers,  to  cheer  us  with  the  sweet- 
ness of  their  songs."  As  there  are  none  more 
enviable  than  the  poor  man  who  has  gath- 


3O       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

ered  about  him  a  few  of  the  vital  books,  and 
has  lived  with  them  until  they  have  trans- 
formed his  soul  —  so  there  is  none  so  piti- 
able as  the  poor  rich  man  who  lives  barren 
in  some  great  bookless  house. 

A  wise  man's  treasures  are  cased  in  leather 
covers,  not  locked  in  iron  coffers.  A  book 
contains  food  inexhaustible;  it  is  a  provi- 
sion for  life,  and  for  the  best  of  life:  there- 
fore it  is  a  duty  to  own  them.  "  We  call  our- 
selves a  rich  nation,"  says  Ruskin ;  "  yet  we 
are  filthy  enough  to  handle  each  other's 
books  out  of  circulating-libraries ! "  Many 
a  thoughtful  man  has  maintained  that  the 
book  which  is  not  worth  buying  is  not  worth 
reading.  As  society  refines,  books  become 
more  necessary,  and  the  taller  they  grow  in 
the  esteem  of  manly  men.  Next  to  acquir- 
ing friends-that-tfr<?-friends,  the  best  acqui- 
sition is  books-that-<zn?-books;  indeed,  no 
human  friendship  can  ever  surpass  that  of 
book-friends  in  our  library,  through  which 
our  head  and  heart  and  character  and  abil- 


BOOK-GATHERING  31 

ity  to  serve  the  higher  needs  of  others  have 
been  lifted  to  loftier  levels :  books  as  well  as 
friendship  mean  enrichment  of  life,  or  they 
mean  nothing  —  every  real  man's  life  is 
spent  in  the  search  for  worthy  books  to  live 
with,  as  well  as  in  the  search  for  friendship. 
Were  the  home-libraries  of  America  emp- 
tied of  all  but  choice  books,  there  should  be 
an  intellectual  and  an  emotional  awaking 
throughout  the  length  and  the  breadth  of 
the  nation. 

The  dining-room  and  the  library  are  the 
two  most  essential  rooms  in  every  home: 
the  one  provides  work-stuff  for  the  body; 
the  other  provides  work-stuff  for  the  soul. 
For  right  health  and  growth,  the  library  is 
as  indispensable  as  the  dining-room  —  per- 
haps we  all  should  be  healthier  and  happier 
and  longer-lived  for  less  dining-room  and 
more  library :  there 's  many  a  fat  paunch  with 
a  lean  head  and  heart  and  character  and  serv- 
ice for  others.  We  seem  sedulous  about 
digging  our  grave  with  our  teeth,  instead  of 


£2       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

building  ever  more  stately  mansions  for  the 
soul  through  wholesome  thought  and  feel- 
ing. A  house  is  a  borne  only  when  its  library 
is  as  regularly  and  as  eagerly  frequented  as 
its  dining-room;  and  the  quality  of  the  home 
is  to  be  measured  by  the  quality  of  the  food- 
service  of  the  library.  Dr.  Holmes  assures 
us  that  quality-<?tf//«£  is  an  essential  element 
in  the  evolution  of  a  gentleman;  and  all 
the  world  of  thoughtful  men  assure  us  that 
quality  library-food  is  equally  essential.  A 
library  is  the  very  soul  of  a  home :  a  house 
without  it  is  just  a  bouse,  never  a  home.  Ev- 
ery well-ordered,  cultured  household  num- 
bers some  of  the  kingly  dead  within  its 
family,  who  are  on  intimate  friendly  terms 
with  the  living  members  of  the  household; 
and  there  might  be  fewer  gloomy  dyspep- 
tics as  well  as  more  leisure  for  physicians  if 
some  of  the  oi^r-time  spent  in  the  dining- 
room  were  given  over  to  these  kingly  dead 
and  to  their  influences. 

A  library  is  a  perennial  fountain  of  re- 


BOOK-GATHERING  33 

freshment  and  instruction  and  wisdom;  it 
is  a  sober  chamber  where  true  men  take 
counsel  of  the  good  and  the  heroic  and  the 
wise  that  have  passed  on  before  them.  A 
library  may  not  be  an  essential  for  salvation, 
although  there  are  men  galore  who  believe 
that  in  these  days  a/a//  life  is  impossible 
without  access  to  bookshelves;  it  may  not 
be  essential  for  what  the  world  calls  business- 
success,  which  much  too  often  means  sim- 
ply getting  money  together  by-hook-or-by- 
crook;  but  a  library  is  essential  for  bringing 
forth  the  best  of  American  manhood,  and 
this  is  the  manhood  about  which  Americans 
are  primarily  concerned  —  without  library- 
influences,  we  Americans  shall  go  stoop- 
shouldered  and  limping  through  life,  and 
help  to  frustrate  the  destiny  of  our  nation. 
To  be  &  patriotic  American  is  no  child's-play ; 
it  is  an  ^i^ryday  task  and  a  lifelong  task  to 
bring  forth  the  best  of  our  individuality.  To 
evolve  one's  self  into  a  creditable  Ameri- 
can manhood  demands  that  we  keep  daily 


34       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

pumping  fresh  emotions  into  ourself ;  and 
whoever  is  intimately  associated  with  the 
best  and  the  wisest  that  live  in  books  is  the 
man  who  is  likeliest  to  do  this  pumping: 
few  of  us  ever  get  the  best  out  of  ourselves 
without  high-class  company. 

Time  graduates  a  man  from  school  and 
college,  but  never  from  his  library — it  is  the 
workshop  of a  gentleman  as  well  as  the  work- 
shop of  a  scholar ;  the  gentleman  that  is  made 
without  library-influences  is  flimsy  stuf£ 
and  does  not  wear  well.  There  is  always  a 
dignity  of  culture  and  an  elegance  which 
grows  up  only  i  n  the  soil  and  atmosphere  of  a 
library — and  how  little  the  din  of  the  stupid 
world  ever  enters  the  soul  and  disturbs  the 
quietude  of  him  who  feeds  upon  the  dain- 
ties that  are  served  in  a  library!  We  make 
far  too  little  of  books  in  this  busy  world  of 
ours,  except  for  j£0z£>-purposes;  we  lose  our 
poise  in  business  and  politics,  and  too  often 
prefer  the  muddy  stream  of  idle  gossip  of 
newspapers  and  magazines  rather  than  the 


BOOK-GATHERING  35 

converse  of  the  best  and  greatest  discoverers 
and  creators!  Unless  we  become  broad  and 
deep  enough  to  discover  the  value  of  books, 
we  must  remain  forever  inferior,  and  shall 
never  attain  insight  into  the  truth  and  beauty 
of  life  —  it  is  book-lack  that  does  so  much 
to  make  manikins  of  what  was  intended  for 
man-stuff.  The  man  with  a  soul  is  always  at 
home  in  a  library;  but  coarser  heads  and 
hearts  demand  material  things  to  set  them 
in  motion  —  not  books:  "the  true  man  is 
in  Paradise  among  his  books;  the  swine- 
herd is  happier  among  his  pigs."  A  soul 
sinks  or  rises  to  the  level  of  its  book-envi- 
ronment and  book-society.  To  a  true  man, 
a  house  without  books  is  as  dark  and  dreary 
as  a  house  without  windows;  if  we  knew  our 
truest  needs,  we  should  prefer  to  be  carpet- 
less  than  bookless  —  the  books  that  the 
bookless  man  scorns  are  the  reverberators 
and  the  reflectors  and  the  telescopes  of 
soul-life,  and  they  have  no  substitutes;  it 
is  only  the  man  who  has  never  owned  and 


36      BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

never  used  a  library  that  sneers  at  books 
and  booklovers. 

Right-living  demands  spiritual  as  well  as 
physical  exercise:  if  we  took  more  of  the 
spiritual,  perhaps  we  should  not  require  so 
much  of  the  physical.  The  man  who  is 
buried  all  daylong  in  work  which  exercises 
his  body  to  the  full  does  not  think  about  his 
head-and-heart  exercise  after  his  day's  work 
is  done,  and  wears  himself  out  in  trivialities 
and  dissipations  which  make  even  a  greater 
draft  upon  his  energies  than  his  work.  A  li- 
brary is  especially  needful  for  the  working- 
man:  it  shall  be  the  good  angel  that  shall 
hallow  his  home — not  only  a  source  of  con- 
solation to  him,  but  a  source  of  power  and 
happiness:  it  shall  lift  him  from  the  drudg- 
ery of  the  day,  and  take  him  away  from  base 
company;  it  shall  give  him  the  close  com- 
panionship of  good  and  ^»<?-thinking  men; 
while  his  body  is  getting  its  needed  rest,  his 
soul  shall  be  working  and  growing.  For 
a  few  cents,  the  workingman  can  have  as 


BOOK-GATHERING  37 

nightly  companions  the  greatest  of  the  phi- 
losophers and  poets,  of  the  scientists  and 
story-tellers.  To  allow  the  library  its  share 
of  the  outfit  of  a  household  and  also  its  por- 
tion of  the  yearly  expenses  is  a  duty — agrave 
duty.  There  is  an  enrichment  which  comes 
even  from  living  where  there  are  books, 
and  it  is  more  to  human  purposes  to  haunt 
the  bookshop  than  the  furniture-shop.  The 
plainest  row  that  paper  or  cloth  ever  cov- 
ered shows  nobler  spirit  than  the  most  elab- 
orately-carved furniture  or  the  most  exquis- 
ite go-carts,  whether  equipage  or  automobile 
or  airplane.  In  any  household,  the  presence 
of  books  is  elevating,  and  their  absence  con- 
tributes to  the  vulgarity  of  its  inmates.  As 
our  views  of  life  become  clearer,  we  perceive 
how  much  a  library  helps  us  to  get  farther 
from  animal  appetites,  and  closer  to  the  di- 
vine that  lives  within  us.  Books  are  not  fur- 
niture, but  nothing  else  so  beautifies  a  home. 
Nothing  can  ever  be  so  homeless  as  a  book- 
less house,  except  the  house  whose  books 


38       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BOOKLOVE 

show  vulgar  conceptions  of  life:  a  collec- 
tion of  ephemeral  books  is  as  far  away  from 
a  library  as  a  collection  of  time-tables  and 
telephone  directories.  We  should  so  collect 
our  library,  that  we  shall  never  find  any 
guest  within  our  walls  who  shall  be  com- 
parable to  the  guests  that  sit  upon  our  book- 
shelves. 

Like  riches  and  learning,  the  value  of  a 
man's  book-gathering  depends  chiefly  upon 
what  he  does  with  his  books.  There  are 
times  when  we  need  books  just  for  soul-r^- 
freshment;  but  we  must  never  lose  sight  of 
their  chief  use,  which  is  for  soul-growth  and 
soul-enrichment.  What  we  especially  require 
in  books  is  neither  quantity  nor  fine  bindery 
nor  rarities  nor  ^rj/-editions,  but  the  best 
that  has  ever  been  thought  and  known  by 
man,  and  all  this  thought  and  knowledge 
expressed  in  rarest  style:  it  is  only  books 
of  this  sort  that  contribute  to  spiritual-growth 
—  it  is  only  when  each  stone  is  a  gem  that 
increase  in  number  is  increase  in  beauty.  Dil- 


BOOK-GATHERING  39 

ettantism  is  almost  as  much  out  of  place  in 
a  library-builder  as  the  extemporizing-fac- 
ulty  is  out  of  place  in  the  pulpit. 

A  mere  collection  of  books  is  not  a  library 
— a  bookshop  is  a  collection  of  books.  A 
library  is  an  organism  that  develops  with  the 
soul  of  its  owner;  it  is  furnished  progressively 
as  his  spiritual-life  progresses.  He  has  the 
wisest  and  the  best  as  his  library-company, 
and  he  keeps  on  good  terms  with  them: 
they  aid  and  direct  him,  they  counsel  and 
console.  He  is  not  fastidious  as  to  the  rai- 
ment of  his  books,  whether  they  are  clad  in 
paper  or  in  cloth,  in  Morocco  or  in  Russia; 
he  is  not  especially  concerned  whether  they 
are  /rj/-editions  or  /^/-editions,  whether 
some  distinguished  man  owned  them  before 
he  got  them,  whether  they  carry  some  fa- 
mous autograph  or  book-plate:  the  amen- 
ities of  bis  book-gathering  spring  from  his 
having onlyjthose  books  with  windows  open 
on  all  sides  to  the  endlessness  of  human  life 
and  human  history.  There  are  men  who  are 


4O       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

book-buyers,  and  cultured  gentlemen  who 
buy  books;  and  they  differ  widely :  the  qual- 
ity of  a  library  depends  upon  who  fills  the 
shelves — like  every  other  kind  of  gather- 
ing-occupation, book-gathering  may  decline 
from  a  j<?«/-occupation  to  a  mere  sensuality. 
A  real  man's  library  is  not  made,  it  grows; 
he  does  not  measure  or  number  his  books, 
he  weighs  them :  he  gains  them  as  he  gains 
his  friends- — one-by-one.  The  books  he 
gathers  are  not  always  those  the  professional 
book-gatherer  seeks,  not  always  those  the 
wise  or  the  would-be-thought-wise  com- 
mend; but  those  that  supply  the  peculiar 
hungers  and  thirsts  of  his  own  soul.  His  li- 
brary is  conspicuous  for  quality  rather  than 
for  quantity:  his  book-gathering  he  consid- 
ers as  a  strictly  personal  matter;  and  he  has, 
perhaps,  a  repugnance  to  being  famed  for 
his  booksorhis  book-plates.  It  requires  only 
a  few  shelves  to  contain  all  the  books  that 
have  done  the  most  to  enrich  the  souls  of 
men.  It  does  not  signify  culture  or  literary 


BOOK-GATHERING  41 

taste  to  have  many  well-laden  bookshelves: 
the  parvenu  often  has  these,  all  richly  ar- 
rayed in  rare  bindings;  but  he  has  them 
mainly  for  vulgar  display.  A  small  library 
yearly  growing  larger  with  worth-while 
books  is  an  honorable  part  of  any  one's  be- 
longings. A  large  library  oftener  distracts 
than  refines  or  delights;  a  scanty  library  is 
always  an  advantage  if  it  helps  a  man  to 
nobler  thoughts  and  feelings,  which  ought 
to  be  the  only  motive  for  an  honest  man's 
reading:  when  life  is  so  fleeting,  it  is  wicked 
to  devote  one's  self  to  pastime,  or  to  getting 
a  reputation  as  a  mere  reader,  or  to  some 
hobby  in  relation  to  books. 

A  man's  enjoyment  of  his  library  shall  be 
proportionate  to  the  extent  to  which  it  is  his 
own  creation.  The  truest  owner  of  a  library 
is  he  who  has  bought  each  book  for  the  sheer 
love  he  bears  it.  The  safest  creator  of  a  library 
is  he  who  has  a  taste  for  books ;  yet,  as  Low- 
ell says,  the  man  is  not  to  be  sneered  at  who 
buys  books  without  knowing  what  they  are 


42       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

about,  for  he  has  made  a  start  in  the  right 
direction  and  is  likely  ultimately  to  become 
a  booklover  as  well  as  a  book-buyer  —  we 
need  not  care  what  motive  urges  the  begin- 
ning of  book-gathering  so  long  as  there  ij  a 
beginning;  it  is  a  far  more  commendable 
way  to  spend  money,  than  to  spend  it  in  va- 
rious gauds  and  sensualities:  the  reading  of 
even  the  backs  of  the  books  in  a  library  is  a 
discipline  in  the  right  direction;  and  buying 
more  books  than  one  can  read  is  only  the 
soul's  reaching  out  for  better  and  bigger 
things,  and  it  is  just  this  reaching  that  helps 
to  raise  us  above  the  beasts. 

The  bibliomane  indiscriminately  buys 
books;  the  bibliotaph  keeps  his  books  under 
lock-and-key ;  the  bibliophile  loves  books, 
and  is  the  only  man  who  gathers  books  and 
forms  a  library  through  sheer  love.  There 
are  few  bibliophiles  at  the  start,  but  many 
a  bibliomane  has  become  a  bibliophile  at 
the  finish.  Although  there  is  nothing  else 
that  so  beautifully  furnishes  a  house,  books 


BOOK-GATHERING  43 

are  for  use;  so,  we  should  have  no  books  so 
fine  that  we  cannot  use  them.  It  is  prudent 
to  have  minor  books  of  the  library  in  cheap 
covers,  but  to  have  all  the  permanent  books 
well-printed  and  well-bound.  Bindings 
should  be  cheerful,  but  plain:  gilt  grows 
tawdry.  To  a  booklover,  slovenly  binding 
is  as  offensive  as  slovenly  writing;  and  to 
write  in  a  slovenly  way  is  an  insult  to  the 
reader,  and  perhaps  an  injury  to  him.  Have 
only  useful  things  that  are  beautiful  was 
Robert  Morris's  rule  in  house-furnishing: 
and  this  may  not  be  far  astray  in  library-fur- 
nishing. "A  book-plate  gives  a  book  a  sta- 
tus which  it  could  not  otherwise  have  had ; 
whenever  we  see  a  book  with  the  owner's 
book-plate,  we  treat  it  with  especial  con- 
sideration, for  it  carries  its  owner's  certifi- 
cate." Above  all  others,  we  must  have  the 
poets  upon  our  bookshelves;  they  are  al- 
ways the  king-guests  in  a  library:  book- 
shelves without  a  poet  resemble  a  garden 
without  a  flower;  and  our  attending  schools 


44       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

shall  have  brought  us  little  for  life-service, 
if  it  has  not  equipped  head  and  heart  to  un- 
derstand the  poets'  messages,  and  the  will  to 
get  all  the  poetry  out  of  life  that  it  is  brim- 
ful of. 

Of  all  the  opportunities  now  offered 
Young  America,  the  most  precious  is  the 
opportunity  to  buy  books;  and,  in  these 
days  of  schools  and  colleges,  it  is  a  marvel 
that  any  young  American  should  have  a  dis- 
relish for  books  or  neglect  to  cultivate  a  taste 
for  them.  A  few  cents'  outlay  can  get  almost 
any  one  of  the  vital  books,  and  children 
should  be  encouraged  to  gather  them :  Low- 
ell says,  "When  the  volumes  are  his  own, 
a  youth  may  mark  the  passages  that  most 
impress  him,  and  live  with  them  until  he 
prizes  them  as  he  does  the  familiar  things 
which  he  associates  with  noble  thoughts  and 
gentle  emotions.  If  a  boy  makes  himself 
master  of  one  vital  book,  he  shall  never  be- 
come a  commonplace  man,  for  the  virtue  of 
a  higher  life  shall  have  been  infused  into  his 


BOOK-GATHERING  45 

own  life  through  this  one  vital  book  of  which 
he  has  become  master."  It  is  a  duty  to  help 
children  to  know  how  to  use  a  library :  they 
shall  soon  love  the  books  as  friends,  and  rude 
company  shall  disgust  them.  A  library  is  one 
of  the  most  precious  things  man  has  ever 
designed,  and  wisely  gathering  a  library  is 
second  only  to  making  a  book  that  shall  be 
fit  reading  for  the  good  and  the  wise  —  li- 
brary-makers are  the  authorets  of  the  world, 
and  stand  second  in  honor  to  authors. 


V 
BOOK-READING 

IT  is  within  our  power  to  know  and  to  love 
the  best  that  has  ever  been  written,  and  thus 
to  become  a  means  to  enlarge  the  views  and 
lift  the  aims  of  others  —  and  this  is  Godlike 
work.  We  put  our  bands  to  work  that  we 
may  live;  we  put  bead  and  heart  to  work 
mainly  that  life  may  be  worthy:  we  cease 
to  be  believers  and  lovers  and  become  only 
partial  men  whenever  we  become  engrossed 
in  the  work  of  our  hands,  or  in  merely  get- 
ting a  living,  or  in  piling  up  material  things 
for  the  numberless  sensual  enjoyments.  It  is 
chiefly  through  reading  that  the  majority  of 
us  can  ever  have  that  intercourse  with  supe- 
rior men,  which  is  the  supreme  essential  for 
soul-growth  —  all  ^velopment  implies  en- 
velopment.  Refinement  as  well  as  scholar- 
ship comes  from  strong-book mindedness, 
as  Wordsworth  calls  it.  Right-reading  is  a 


BOOK-READING  47 

preparation  for  some  worthy  ///"^-activity, 
and  only  that  reading  helps  which  puts  us 
in  a  working-mood.  The  longest  life  of  the 
greatest  industry  shall  not  cover  even  a  hun- 
dredth part  of  the  great  books  of  instruction 
and  inspiration,  and  it  is  inexcusable  slaugh- 
ter of  time  to  accustom  one's  self  to  read  infe- 
rior books:  to  be  unable  to  read  is  not  nearly 
so  shameful  or  so  dreadful  as  to  readonly  infe- 
rior books — reading  must  be  a  jo#/-exercise, 
rarely  a  relaxation. 

Every  expanding  mind  finds  that  he  gets 
more  inspiration  from  his  reading,  than  he 
gets  from  his  most  cultured  friend.  Who- 
ever reads  rightly  may  not  become  saint  or 
sage  or  hero,  but  he  shall  never  become  ig- 
noble. The  wise  and  the  good  of  every  nation 
have  heaped  up  treasures  for  him ;  he  is  an 
inheritor  of  everything  that  has  been  discov- 
ered by  labor  or  created  by  genius,  and  his 
reading  lets  him  into  the  soul  of  these  labor- 
ers and  creators  and  opens  to  him  both  the 
secrets  and  the  treasures  of  his  own  soul. 


48       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

Persistent  devotion  to  the  ideals  we  get  from 
books  brings  increased  power  to  think  and 
to  serve,  to  believe  in  the  goodness  and  the 
greatness  of  life,  and  to  have  an  ever-increas- 
ing interest  and  delight  in  life.  Ability  to 
read  rightly  admits  us  to  the  whole  world  of 
thought  and  imagination,  to  the  company  of 
saint  and  hero  and  poet;  it  gives  us  an  inti- 
mate acquaintance  with  the  wisest  and  the 
wittiest  at  their  wisest  and  wittiest  moments; 
it  broadens  vision  and  deepens  self-knowl- 
edge, and  makes  us  yearn  for  self-improve- 
ment and  the  development  of  our  individ- 
uality; it  dignifies  the  everyday-details  of 
life,  turns  home  into  a  perennial  refuge  and 
solace,  and  compensates  us  for  having  to 
live  so  much  amid  the  commonplace  with 
which  our  daily  life  is  surrounded.  The  no- 
ble are  moved  only  by  what  ministers  to 
soul-growtb  and  soul-power;  it  is  only  silli- 
ness and  shows  and  other  sensualities  that 
can  captivate  the  ignoble.  To  the  thoughtful 
man,  reading  is  only  a  means,  never  an  end; 


BOOK-READING  49 

how  many  books  he  reads  does  not  concern 
him,  but  what  and  bow  he  reads.  Whoever 
is  seeking  for  truth  and  beauty  and  happi- 
ness and  knowledge  and  wisdom  must  make 
himself  a  reader-of-books.  It  is  the  habitual 
narrowness  of  the  bookless  man  that  pre- 
vents him  from  realizing  that  books  are  in- 
tended for  our  illumination  and  soul-guid- 
ance and  delight:  whatever  else  he  may  be, 
the  man  without  the  culture  which  comes 
from  wise  and  intimate  intercourse  with 
books  is  narrow  and  unintelligent. 

Right-reading  is  j-0#/-traveling  through 
regions  more  varied  and  attractive  and 
bealtb-giv'mg  than  all  that  can  be  had  from 
a  lifetime  of  wor/^-wandering.  Of  all  the 
occupations  that  are  known  to  man,  there  is 
none  so  dignified  as  r/g"£/-reading  and  none 
so  wasteful  as  wrowg-reading:  when  every- 
thing else  fails,  we  can  trust  the  service  and 
the  companionship  of  books;  better  than 
any  living  society,  they  help  us  to  know  and 
to  cherish  the  divine  germ  that  lives  in  each 


5O       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

of  us,  and  to  produce  the  Godlike  both 
within  and  without  ourself.  The  r/££/-read- 
ing  habit  brings  high  thought,  tender  heart, 
and  an  ever-enlarging  acquaintance  with 
human-nature;  it  transforms  into  repose  and 
delight  those  many  weary  hours  that  thrust 
themselves  into  each  one's  life;  it  gives  cath- 
olicity, spiritual  strength,  and  moral  muscle. 
There  is  no  other  means  of  pleasure  and 
profit  that  costs  so  little  and  lasts  so  long : 
when  real  books  have  become  our  teachers 
and  companions,  we  walk  through  life  with 
wide-open  eyes  and  a  receptive  soul;  and, 
better  than  any  other  teachers  and  compan- 
ions, they  help  us  to  purer  and  higher  tastes 
in  nature,  art,  literature,  and  conduct.  The 
man  of  purpose  carries  away  from  each 
reading  either  something  to  rouse  his  fancies 
in  a  leisure  hour,  or  something  to  gird  him 
in  adversity.  Centuries  ago  St.  Basil  said 
that,  in  the  combat  which  men  must  sustain, 
they  must  be  fortified  by  history  and  philos- 
ophy and  poetry. 


BOOK-READING  51 

A  man  should  read  to  live,  not  live  to 
read:  there  is  a  gulf  between  book-inquiry 
and  book-curiosity.  Reading  must  give  the 
soul  its  work-stuff,  must  give  additional  life 
and  nourishment,  must  enable  us  to  sound 
the  depths  of  our  own  self;  else,  it  is  main- 
ly idleness.  We  are  noble  not  because  we 
read  many  books,  but  because  we  apply  them. 
Much  reading  and  little  thinking  weakens 
the  mind ;  but  little  reading  and  much  think- 
ing brings  light  and  power:  it  has  been  said 
that  he  is  wise  who  reads  fifteen  minutes 
and  thinks  forty-five  minutes  about  it.  Low- 
ell says  that  every  book  we  read  must  be 
made  a  round  in  the  ever-lengthening  lad- 
der by  which  we  climb  to  knowledge,  and 
to  that  soul-serenity  and  that  soul-temperance 
which  is  the  richest  and  the  sweetest  fruit 
of  culture;  but  that  these  can  be  reached 
only  by  reading  the  books  that  make  us 
think,  and  by  reading  them  so  that  they 
shall  make  us  able  to  think.  Large-reading 
is  as  irrelevant  as  hrgt-eating:  it  is  thought 


52       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR   BoOKLOVE 

and  digestion  and  assimilation  that  make 
book  s  ser  v  iceable.  The  man  who  reads  right- 
ly never  reads  as  a  cold  and  blind  bookworm 
or  with  scientific-greed  or  pedant-pride  or 
critic-art;  he  reads  to  please  himself  and  to 
serve  his  soul.  Reading  never  profits  unless 
it  is  a  pleasure,  for  whatever  is  a  labor  to  read 
is  never  retained — the  first  requirement  is 
to  read  what  shall  appease  our  desires  or 
satisfy  our  wants.  Every  book  we  read  should 
excel  us  in  intellectual  and  moral  strength, 
and  we  should  always  prefer  the  books  which 
start  ideas  rather  than  those  which  put  ideas 
— prefer  those  that  give  power  rather  than 
those  that  give  light  and  relaxation.  A  wise 
reader  shuns  a  badly-written  book  —  the 
book- viands  that  are  badly-served  may  be 
as  harmful  as  those  that  are  badly-cooked: 
if  a  thought  is  worth  expressing,  the  writer 
owes  it  to  the  reader  to  set  it  in  fitting  word 
and  phrase.  To  read  only  it?<?//-written  books 
is  a  marvelous  aid  in  language-culture:  an 
awkward,  careless,  badly-written  book  is  an 


BOOK-READING  53 

insult  and  a  hindrance  to  the  reader;  the 
richer  the  thought,  the  richer  the  setting 
should  be.  What  we  like  to  read  is  not  near- 
ly so  important  as  what  we  ought  to  read: 
whatever  our  reading  tastes  may  be,  we  must 
never  forget  that  there  is  a  best,  and  that  the 
best  is  always  the  most  serviceable. 

The  reading-/?^// is  acquired  by  reading 
just  what  we  want  to  read  and  just  when  we 
want  to  read  it — harness  may  be  good  for 
the  maturer  mind,  but  the  fr ^-pasture  is  es- 
sential for" the  beginner:  he  should  be  turned 
loose  to  browse  at  random,  yet  helped  to  ac- 
custom himself  always  first  to  have  a  good 
try  at  the  best.  It  should  be  a  principle  of 
every  reader  to  use  the  kind  of  mind-food 
that  brings  the  right  kind  of  mind-growth. 
If  a  book  is  beyond  our  understanding,  we 
should  drop  it  at  once,  and  wait  until  our 
spiritual  strength  shall  enable  us  to  carry  it; 
and  we  should  be  honest  enough  to  say  that 
it  is  beyond  us.  The  very  best  books,  like 
the  very  best  people,  cannot  always  please, 


54      BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

for  the  soul  is  not  always  craving  that  sort 
of  food.  Each  must  find  for  himself  the  book 
he  needs:  there  may  be  no  message  for  him 
in  the  book  that  the  world  calls  great;  let 
him  keep  up  his  courage,  continue  to  seek 
and  to  read,  and  in  time  he  shall  find  some 
writer  who  'shall  fill  his  heart  and  open  vi- 
sions of  new  worlds  to  his  wondering  eyes 
— no  two  writers  have  the  same  message  or 
can  ever  make  the  same  appeal. 

Reading  is  not  a  business  for  a  sou\-s/ug- 
gard:  it  is  a  labor  to  which  every  faculty 
must  be  awake  and  active.  "To  read  true 
books  in  a  true  spirit,"  says  Thoreau,  "  is  a 
noble  exercise,  and  one  which  shall  task  the 
reader  more  than  any  exercise  which  the 
customs  of  the  day  esteem:  it  requires  a 
training  such  as  athletes  underwent,  and  al- 
most a  lifelong  steady  attention  to  this  ob- 
ject." Right-rAfc//0£  is  as  difficult  to  learn  as 
the  art  of  right-Try//^ —  the  great  Goethe 
said,  "  I  have  been  fifty  years  learning  how 
to  read,  and  have  not  yet  succeeded."  Be- 


BOOK-READING  55 

fore  we  can  read  rightly,  we  must  acquire 
the  habit  of  looking  and  seeing:  Dr.  Johnson 
said  that  some  men  can  see  more  while  rid- 
ing ten  miles  upon  a  stage-coach  in  Eng- 
land, than  others  can  see  from  traveling  all 
over  Europe  —  he  who  would  bring  back 
the  riches  of  The  Indies  must  carry  out  the 
riches  of  The  Indies.  We  are  told  that  some 
readers  are  like  jelly-bags;  they  let  all  pass 
that  is  good,  and  retain  only  the  impure  and 
the  refuse:  that  some  are  like  sponges;  they 
suck  up  all  and  give  it  back,  only  a  little 
dirtier:  that  some  are  like  the  sands  of  the 
hour-glass;  their  reading  runs  in  and  out, 
and  leaves  no  trace  behind  it:  that  just  a  few 
are  like  the  workers  in  the  Golconda  Mines; 
they  retain  the  gold  and  the  gems,  and  cast 
aside  the  dirt  and  the  dross.  There  are  some 
readers  who  enjoy  without  judgment,  and 
some  who  judge  without  enjoyment;  but 
the  true  reader  enjoys  while  he  judges, 
and  judges  while  he  enjoys.  Observation, 
thought,  and  reading  are  three  manhood- 


56       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BOOKLOVE 

essentials:  reading  and  thought  without  ob- 
servation begets  a  bookworm ;  reading  and 
observation  without  thought  begets  the  in- 
tellectual busybody;  observation  and  the 
thought  it  may  awake  without  reading  may 
beget  shre  wdness,but  it  never  begets  breadth. 
Every  book  that  is  read  without  a  purpose 
is  an  opportunity  lost  to  read  a  book  with 
a  purpose;  and  to  skim  a  book  as  it  is  our 
duty  to  skim  a  newspaper  is  to  harm  our 
faculties  permanently.  As  we  cannot  fath- 
om the  wealth  of  life  there  is  in  a  true  man 
by  occasional  conversations  with  him,  so  we 
never  can  appreciate  the  worth  of  a  true  book 
just  by  reading  it:  we  must  study  it,  learn 
to  know  it  as  we  know  a  friend,  and  return 
to  it  again-and-again  with  expectant  and 
joyous  heart  just  as  we  return  to  those  we 
love — right-reading  comes  perilously  near 
studying.  "I  love  not  those  who  skim  dip- 
pingly  over  the  surface  of  a  page  as  swal- 
lows over  a  pool  before  rain:  by  such  no 
pearls  are  found;  if  there  be  no  pearls,  let 


BOOK-READING  57 

us  hope  that  an  oyster  or  two  may  reward 
adequate  perseverance;  if  there  be  no  pearls 
or  oysters,  yet  is  patience  itself  a  thing  worth 
diving  for."  Ruskin  says  that  the  court  of 
the  kingly  dead  is  open  only  to  merit  and 
to  labor,  that  no  vile  or  vulgar  person  can 
enter  there;  that,  if  we  want  to  be  the  com- 
panions of  these  kings,  we  must  make  our- 
self  kingly ;  that  if  we  long  for  the  conversa- 
tion of  the  wise,  we  must  learn  to  understand 
it  and  we  shall  hear  it;  that  we  must  rise  to 
the  level  of  their  thoughts  if  we  would  be 
gladdened  by  them,  must  share  in  their  feel- 
ings if  we  would  recognize  their  presence. 
In  the  realm  of  books  to  him  that  has  shall 
be  given;  and  he  who  has  not  the  power 
through  the  culture  of  his  spiritual-facul- 
ties, though  he  may  yearn  to  understand 
Plato,  shall  quickly  return  to  his  newspaper. 
We  must  read  much,  but'  not  many  books: 
the  soul  must  not  be  a  vessel,  but  a  vat.  To 
get  at  the  heart  of  books,  we  must  live  with 
and  in  them.  The  real  book  is  a  strong 


58       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

tincture — to  be  taken  drop-by-drop,  not 
gulped  down  by  the  bottle.  As  the  body 
assumes  only  the  j?»<?  essence  of  the  food  it 
consumes,  so  a  r/^/-reader  takes  and  makes 
his  own  only  a  very  small  part  of  what  he 
reads:  the  virtue  of  each  book  must  sink 
into  the  soul,  and  become  a  living  and  gener- 
ative force.  Both  books  and  men  talk  better 
to  us  when  we  talk  back  to  them;  and  it  is 
better  never  to  see  a  book,  than  to  be  warped 
by  it  out  of  our  orbit  and  become  a  sat- 
ellite instead  of  a  system. 

Every  reader  must  learn  the  art  of  judi- 
cious skipping —  in  these  days,  whole  libra- 
ries maybe  skipped;  even  the  worthy  books 
that  we  decide  to  read  have  large  portions 
which  do  not  concern  us  in  the  least,  and 
shall  be  forgotten  the  day  after  we  read 
them:  "as  the  fairest  fruit-tree  is  chiefly 
w00*/-bearing,  breaking  out  here  and  there 
into  fragrant  blossom  and  delicious  fruit,  so 
even  the  very  best  books  are  mostly  dull 
matter,  where  at  intervals  heavenly  truth 


BOOK-READING  59 

kissed  by  the  sun  of  genius  buds  and  blos- 
soms into  perfect  form."  Lowell  thought 
that  we  should  choose  one  great  writer  and 
become  thoroughly  familiar  with  him;  and 
he  reminds  us  that  to  understand  perfectly 
and  weigh  exactly  one  vital  book,  we  shall 
be  gradually  and  pleasantly  persuaded  to 
excursions  and  explorations  that  we  little 
dreamt  of  when  we  began,  and  shall  find 
ourself  a  scholar  and  an  educated  man  be- 
fore we  are  aware.  One  may  browse  in  many 
fields  if  his  digestion  and  assimilation  are 
good;  but  the  supreme  books  of  life  must 
form  the  background  of  every  life  of  thought 
and  study. 

Wrong-reading  —  To  be  open  to  every 
book  is  to  gain  nothing  from  any  book.  The 
book-hungry  man  crams  himself  with  ma- 
terials that  do  him  no  good:  it  is  the  lumber 
put  to  use  that  is  valuable;  the  insatiable 
reader  almost  always  reads  with  least  profit. 
Desultory  reading  is  very  mischievous: 
it  fosters  habits  of  loose,  disconnected 


6O       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

thoughts;  it  makes  a  sewer  of  the  intellect 
through  which  any  thoughts  may  flow;  it 
causes  mind- wandering,  which  is  the  foe  to 
culture;  it  breeds  inattention,  which  is  a 
faculty  that  needs  most  care.  "Except  as 
conscious  pastime," says  Lowell,  "desultory 
reading  hebetates  the  brain,  and  weakens 
the  bow-string  of  will;  it  communicates  as 
little  intelligence  as  the  messages  that  run 
along  the  telegraph-wires  do  to  birds  perched 
upon  them."  Hasty,  omnivorous  swallow- 
ing of  books  causes  soul-dyspepsia  as  sure- 
ly as  thoughtless  gluttony  ruins  digestion. 
Blackie  says  that  desultory  reading  resem- 
bles a  little  dog  running  about  a  lawn :  he 
sniffs  at  everything,  but  catches  nothing. 
The  mere  bookworm  is  the  most  useless  of 
useless  men;  book-dissipation  and  physical 
drunkenness  lead  to  debauchery.  The  head 
that  is  a  sieve  through  which  every  book- 
decoction  is  drained  retains  only  the  refuse. 
A  man  maybe  a  devourer  of  books,  yet  in- 
capable of  reading  a  hundred  lines  of  the 


BOOK-READING  61 

wisest  and  most  beautiful.  If  you  read  ten 
pages  of  a  book  with  accuracy,  says  Ruskin, 
you  are  forever  in  some  measure  an  educated 
man;  and  Thoreau  says  that  a  book  should 
be  read  as  deliberately  as  it  is  written.  Who 
sips  of  many  arts  drinks  none;  still,  we  should 
dread  the  man  who  reads  only  one  book  or 
one  kind  of  book,  for  he  is  sure  to  be  one- 
sided and  unreasonable. 

Reading  for  amusement  is  an  occupation 
for  the  most  stagnant  moments  of  life  and  for 
the  lazy-soul.  Whoever  reads  for  amusement 
soon  becomes  averse  to  the  continuous  ap- 
plication which  is  essential  to  get  full  benefit 
from  serious-reading  and  he  soon  becomes 
averse  to  continuous  application  of  any  kind 
—  he  grows  \xLy-bodied  as  well  as  lazy- 
souled,  and  is  utterly  unfitted  for  any  duty 
which  he  assumes.  Reading  is  not  always  a 
commendable  occupation:  it  may  spring 
from  vanity  or  indolence  or  from  a  fondness 
for  what  is  frivolous  and  sensational;  it  may 
also  be  a  disease  or  the  indulgence  of  mor- 


62       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

bid  propensities,  like  that  dreadful  disease 
of  haunting  moving-picture  resorts,  which 
is  so  prevalent  among  the  /////<?-souled  peo- 
ple. The  effects  of  inferior  reading  are  the 
same  as  the  effects  from  associating  with  su- 
perficial and  inferior  people — it  wastes  time, 
enfeebles  discernment,  dulls  intellectual 
edge,  prevents  us  from  ever  appreciating 
any  of  the  excellent  things  of  life:  few  have 
ever  risen  even  to  mediocrity  whose  time  has 
been  devoted  to  inferior  reading. 

Newspapers  and  magazines  are  mainly  idle 
things  for  the  idle  hours  of  idle  people ;  to 
read  them  properly  is  one  of  the  supreme 
acts  of  presence-of-mind.  They  are  mainly 
as  soulless  as  the  syndicates  that  publish 
them,  and  the  chances  are  ten-to-one  that 
they  shall  waste  our  time  or  mislead  us,  or 
both.  Newspapers  purvey  the  news  of  the 
entire  world,  and  they  are  the  only  bridge 
that  so  many  millions  will  ever  use  over  the 
Gulf  of  Ignorance;  yet,  far  too  often  they 
are  pickers  of  gossip  and  scandal,  searching 


BOOK-READING  63 

the  gutters  and  the  garbage-barrels  of  the 
world  for  every  unclean  and  tainted  scrap 
of  mishap  and  misdoing.  In  every  newspa- 
per there  is  a  bit  that  we  should  read;  the  art 
is  to  find  this  bit,  and  to  waste  no  time  with 
the  rest.  Ability  to  be  pleased  with  the  best 
depends  upon  intimate  acquaintance  with 
the  best;  hence,  we  must  confine  our  read- 
ing to  the  best,  and  read  the  newspapers 
mainly  by  headlines — those  who  handle  filth 
shall  get  dirty  fingers.  The  magazines  seem 
to  be  the  chosen  reading  of  the  throng,  and 
they  leave  them  as  they  find  them — mainly 
unintelligent  and  unfeeling;  the  knowledge 
they  give  is  fragmentary,  and  often  untrue; 
and  they  teach  the  throng  just  enough  to 
make  them  talkative  about  what  they  are 
far  from  comprehending:  what  leaves  us  un- 
moved leaves  us  unimproved. 

The  !tgbt-reading-hzbit\\  It  is  as  fatal  to 
culture  as  the  eating-habit  is  to  health  and 
longevity.  Heads  that  are  fed  upon  it  be- 
come flabby,  frivolous,  and  illogical.  It  ut- 


64       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

terly  debilitates  and  corrupts  the  mind  for 
wholesome  life  as  well  as  for  wholesome 
reading;  it  throws  us  into  foolish  or  vicious 
company,  dissipates  our  spirits,  sullies  our 
faith  in  God  and  man,  makes  our  talk  frothy 
and  puerile,  and  leaves  us  incapable  ever  of 
associating  with  manly  men  or  womanly 
women.  Those  who  are  too  weak  in  head 
to  bear  the  fatigue  of  thinking  always  resort 
to  newspapers,  magazines,  or  flashy-fiction. 
Anything  like  an  honorable  life  is  impossi- 
ble for  those  addicted  to  reading  for  amuse- 
ment or  to  //^/-reading,  because  such  read- 
ing makes  their  adherents  incapable  of 
admiration  and  reverence  and  seriousness, 
which  are  three  virtues  found  in  every  wor- 
thy man  and  woman.  The  head  and  heart 
that  have  been  relaxed  by  fiction  that  lacks 
even  intellectual  fiber  are  in  sad  condition 
to  meet  the  perils  and  the  requirements  of 
life.  The  religious  story-books  are  hardly  fit 
reading  for  self-respecting  Christians — they 
are  generally  feeble  in  thought,  slovenly  in 


BOOK-READING  65 

style,  goodish  in  sentiment,  and  untrue  in 
portrayinghuman-nature.  Tokeepthecom- 
pany  of  periodicals  and  light-fiction  is  to  live 
in  the  crowd;  and  in  the  crowd  it  is  impos- 
sible to  retain  self-respect,  which  is  the  very 
foundation  of  virtue.  It  is  only  the  intellec- 
tual loafer  and  the  moral  paralytic  that  lolls 
over  the  trash  and  the  filth  of  cheap  fiction: 
newspapers  and  magazines  have  their  im- 
portant place  in  the  world;  but  light-reading 
has  nothing  for  anybody  but  distraction, 
dissipation,  and  debauchery.  Debilitating 
waste  of  head  and  heart  in  aimless,  promis- 
cuous, vapid  reading  in  the  poisonous  ex- 
halations of  book-garbage — this  is  misuse 
of  reading,  the  sin  of  it.  So  much  of  the  shal- 
low conceit  and  the  opinionated  infallibility 
which  prevails  to-day  is  attributable  quite 
as  much  to  inferior-reading  as  to  the  smat- 
tering of  the  school-mills.  Ruskin  says  that 
when  we  have  learned  to  read  rightly,  we 
shall  gradually  attach  less  weight  to  our  own 
opinions,  shall  perceive  that  our  thought 


66       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BOOKLOVE 

upon  any  subject  is  not  the  clearest  and  wis- 
est, and  that  what  we  think  of  a  subject  is  of 
small  importance  —  that  we  have  no  mate- 
rial from  which  to  build  an  opinion  on  any 
serious  subject  at  all :  we  shall  soon  become 
convinced  that  on  serious  matters  we  have 
no  right  to  think  —  only  to  try  to  learn 
truths  and  facts.  This  lesson  in  humility  from 
r/f£/-reading  is  one  of  its  richest  returns : 
launch  not  beyond  your  depth,  and  mark 
that  place  where  your  power  and  knowledge 
leave  off  and  your  impotence  and  ignorance 
begin. 

The  />#£/;V-libraries!!  When  eighty  per 
cent  of  the  books  they  distribute  is  inferior 
fiction  full  of  fribbles  and  oddities  and 
monstrosities,  a  public-library  is  anything 
but  a  public-benefit!  We  need  to  be  taught 
how  to  use  a  library  just  as  much  as  we  need 
to  be  taught  correct  business  life  or  domes- 
tic life:  through  lack  of  being  taught  what 
book-food  to  use  and  how  to  use  it,  almost 
all  the  public-library  patrons  have  weak 


BOOK-READING  67 

book- stomachs  able  to  digest  nothing 
stronger  than  the  insipid  society-novel,  and 
nothing  purer  than  the  mud  of  newspapers 
and  magazines. 


VI 

BOOK-MAKING 

IF  spiritual  and  moral  life  count  for  noth- 
ing, then  those  who  provide  food  and  shelter 
and  pastime,  clothing  and  commodities  and 
comforts  are  the  most  important  men  in  the 
world;  if  the  greatest  thing  in  the  world  is 
the  power  to  enlighten  the  souls  and  refine 
the  tastes  of  the  people,  then  we  owe  almost 
everything  on  this  side  of  barbarism  to  book- 
makers—  they  are  guides  and  inspirers,  and 
their  life  is  a  glorious  service;  in  the  regen- 
eration of  humanity,  they  count  beyond  all 
others.  "  I  for  one  shall  never  be  persuaded," 
says  Lowell,  "that  Shakespeare  left  a  less- 
useful  legacy  than  did  Watt  by  his  inven- 
tion of  steam-power:  the  tenants  of  the 
imagination  afford  all  the  deepest  and  the 
highest  satisfactions  in  life.  Nature  shall 
keep  up  the  supply  of  what  are  called 


BOOK-MAKING  69 

hard-beaded  men  without  our  help;  but 
there  are  other  uses  for  heads  quite  as  good 
as  those  at  the  end  of  the  world's  battering- 
rams." 

A  true  writer  looks  upon  his  art  as  a  re- 
ligion, and  he  is  rewarded  only  when  he  has 
bettered  his  readers.  He  is  strong-minded 
and  ngi>/-minded,  with  a  soul  that  sets  in 
motion  the  soul  of  others;  and  he  does  wor- 
thy work  because  he  is  thoroughly  sincere  to 
himself.  He  writes  simply  and  spontaneously 
only  about  those  things  that  he  is  fullest  of 
and  best  understands ;  he  holds  it  his  business 
to  utter  wholesome  truth,  not  to  seek  readers 
or  renown  or  returns  in  money.  His  habit 
of  expression  leads  him  to  search  for  some- 
thing to  express;  hence,  his  life  is  one  of 
intense  and  incessant  labor;  he  is  a  ceaseless 
thinker,  and  always  solicitous  to  renew 
his  mind  with  fresh  knowledge  and  new 
thought ;  he  ransacks  a  thousand  thought- 
mines  for  their  gold  and  gems  —  like  flower 
and  fruit,  every  real  book  is  the  result  of 


7O       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

culture,  for  nothing  excellent  is  merely  nat- 
ural. Whatever  be  writes  is  produced  by  the 
gentle  heat  of  incubation,  for  it  is  only  the 
book  that  has  had  time  enough  to  be  prop- 
erly hatched  that  has  vitality  enough  to  live 
and  to  serve:  the  writer  of  the  moment  is 
rarely  the  writer  of  the  eternities;  "he  cack- 
les oftener  than  he  lays  real  eggs"-— the 
less  weight  a  pen  and  a  race-horse  carry,  the 
faster  they  run. 

The  man  who  writes  a  book  without  a 
message  wastes  his  time  and  our  time.  It 
is  a  writer's  chief  office  to  minister  to  soul- 
wants:  that  writer  is  always  the  most  help- 
ful to  mankind  whose  book  is  a  rock  to  build 
life  upon.  It  is  only  from  books  written  in 
uttermost  sincerity  by  men  of  love  and  sym- 
pathy that  we  can  get  instruction  and  inspi- 
ration and  proper  recreation,  which  are  the 
only  justifiable  ends  for  reading  at  all.  The 
base  writer  destroys  both  good  taste  and  true 
culture;  and  the  enthusiastic  writer  with 
little  or  no  capacity  is  a  dangerous  man.  It 


BOOK-MAKING  71 

is  dishonest  for  a  writer  to  claim  an  audience 
before  he  has  something  real  to  say  and  be- 
fore he  has  put  it  into  the  best  form  that  is 
possible  for  him,  for  bad  art  in  a  writer  is  bad 
morals  —  he  should  drink  deep  in  prepara- 
tion, or  let  writing  alone.  It  is  not  quantity 
that  is  demanded  to-day,  but  the  best  that 
can  be  known  and  thought,  and  then  ex- 
pressed in  richest  form.  For  purposes  of 
culture,  the  ar  fist-side  of  a  writer  is  almost 
as  important  as  his  thought;  it  is  rich  thought 
in  rich  expression  that  does  most  to  help  on 
spiritual-life  —  to  keep  the  company  of  men 
and  books  that  speak  rich-cream  English 
rather  than  the  skim-milk  of  the  street  is  the 
very  best  means  for  acquiring  rich-cream 
expression:  every  writer  is  under  bonds  to 
readers. 

Whoever  writes  to  instruct  and  inspire 
must  not  expect  many  readers,  for  the 
greater  number  prefer  gossip  or  amusement 
to  wisdom.  Whoever  writes  to  amuse  the 
masses  shall  have  a  myriad-audience,  but 


72       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

he  shall  rarely  rise  above  the  mountebank. 
To  vulgarize  humanity  seems  to  be  the  mis- 
sion of  the  low-bred  writer:  he  is  generally 
unscrupulous  and  debasing.  It  is  with  books 
as  with  life — wherever  we  turn,  we  come 
upon  the  incorrigible  crowd  swarming  ev- 
erywhere and  damaging  everything  as  flies 
in  summer.  The  talented  writer  who  em- 
ploys his  powers  in  propagating  immorality 
and  in  seasoning  vicious  sentiments  with  his 
wit  and  humor  shall  have  his  day-of-reckon- 
ing.  The  best  entertainment  any  writer  can 
give  is  that  which  lifts  our  imagination  and 
lightens  our  life-burdens,  by  taking  us  out 
of  humdrum  and  sordidness  for  a  time,  so 
that  we  may  see  ideal,  familiar  life  and  see 
it  more  truly  from  the  0r//j/-writer's  view- 
point. Almost  all  of  us  are  encompassed  by 
sad  and  sordid  conditions;  and  whoever 
carries  us  far  from  these  through  his  book 
into  what  is  best  and  beautiful  in  life,  both 
relaxes  and  refreshes  us.  Each  day's  experi- 
ences give  us  glimpses  of  how  ill  and  how 


BOOK-MAKING  73 

vulgar  men  can  be;  and  it  is  always  refresh- 
ing to  know  the  romantic  truth. 

Nature  has  inflicted  barrenness  upon  many 
a  mind  which  nevertheless  has  teemed  with 
productions.  Writing  books  is  not  a  trade, 
but  an  art  which  demands  peculiar  powers 
and  patient  practice.  All  the  true  writers  are 
doers,  although  they  are  people  who  seem 
to  have  nothing  to  do:  nothing  seems  so 
fruitful  in  a  writer  as  a  fine  gift  for  what  com- 
mon people  call  idleness.  They  say  that  the 
muses  are  jealous  mistresses,  and  never  lend 
their  higher  gifts  to  those  who  plunge  very 
deep  into  the  tumult  of  the  world  —  both 
gods  and  muses  as  well  as  wise  men  hate 
those  who  do  too  much;  and  those  who  woo 
the  muses  must  keep  the  even  tenor  of  their 
way  along  the  cool  sequestered  walks  of  life, 
far  from  the  madding  crowd's  ignoble  strife. 
Dr.  Holmes  closed  his  portfolio  for  twenty- 
five  years  after  his  physician-life  began,  and 
opened  it  only  after  his  professional  stand- 
ing was  established;  and  Hawthorne,  our 


74      BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

greatest  romancer,  was  mute  duringhis  years 
of  work-life  at  Salem,  Boston,  and  Liver- 
pool. It  is  different  with  scholars:  a  forge  is 
not  a  convenient  desk,  yet  Elihu  Burritt 
learned  there  many  of  his  thirty  languages 
between  the  times  when  he  was  blowing  his 
bellows  in  the  service  of  his  farmer-neigh- 
bors; the  nursery  is  not  the  place  one  would 
choose  for  astronomical  calculations,  yet, 
beset  by  her  children,  whom  she  never  neg- 
lected, Mary  Somerville  wrought  out  her 
"Mechanism  of  the  Heavens,"  which  put 
her  into  the  first  rank  of  contemporary  sci- 
entists, and  made  her  a  member  of  The 
Royal  Astronomical  Society.  It  was  not  for 
nothing  that  Hawthorne,  Charles  Reade, 
Tennyson,  Stevenson,  and  scores  of  others 
who  have  left  their  footprints  spent  years  in 
apprenticeship  to  their  art. 

Making  books  as  a  means  of  making 
money  has  multiplied  books  for  the  sake 
of  the  writers  rather  than  for  the  readers: 
whoever  is  thinking  about  the  royalty  of 


BOOK-MAKING  75 

his  books  will  watch  his  fame  rather  than 
the  welfare  of  his  readers.  Somebody  says 
that  there  is  always  a  metallic  taste  about  a 
book  written  under  the  stimulus  of  so  much 
money  for  so  many  words.  Butler  says  it  is 
a  writer's  duty  to  talk  up  to  his  auditors,  not 
down  to  them.  The  writer  who  sells  his  tal- 
ents finds  it  hard  not  to  sink  to  the  level  of 
those  whom  he  addresses.  When  writing 
becomes  a  business,  the  very  power  of  con- 
templation becomes  impaired  and  pervert- 
ed: the  true  writer  always  writes  first  to 
please  himself  and  to  relieve  himself,  then 
to  please  and  to  elevate  those  who  keep  his 
company.  Writing  is  always  better  for  be- 
ing an  appendage  to  some  other  work  —  an 
avocation  rather  than  a  vocation:  Longfel- 
low did  not  improve  the  quality  of  his  work 
by  quitting  his  professorship  at  Harvard 
and  devoting  himself  exclusively  to  his  art; 
Bryant's  fifty  years  of  busy  life  "drudging 
for  the  dregs  of  men,"  as  he  called  it,  did 
not  mar  from  first  to  last  the  quality  of  the 


76       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

art  he  manifested  in  "Thanatopsis,"  al- 
though it  did  reduce  his  annual  output  to 
seventy-five  lines. 

A  good  book  need  not  necessarily  be  writ- 
ten by  a  man-of-letters:  some  wonderful 
books  have  been  made  by  men  who  gave 
no  special  attention  to  book-making.  Vora- 
cious students  as  well  as  habitual  writers  rare- 
ly make  a  book  with  vitality  enough  to  live 
beyond  its  infancy,  and  great  thinkers  who 
write  are  seldom  as  serviceable  as  thoughtful 
men  who  write.  Men-of-the-desk  cannot 
touch  the  hearts  of  the  plain  people — it  is 
only  the  unbookish  folk  who  write  from  pas- 
sion that  ever  do  this:  it  is  just  because  Rous- 
seau could  never  write  except  from  passion 
that  he  is  the  mightiest  literary  force  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  although  he  had  neither 
great  intellect  nor  great  knowledge.  The 
world's  great  books  never  come  from  a  book- 
ish people — almost  all  that  they  write  is 
born  to  die ;  it  is  the  nations  that  are  « wbook- 
ish  in  habits  that  have  made  the  great  books 


BOOK-MAKING  77 

—  Greece  gave  Homer,  England  gave 
Shakespeare.  The  power  to  write  great  things 
is  rarely  an  heirloom:  "David,  Isaiah,  Ho- 
mer, yEschylus,  Horace,  Dante,  [Tasso,  Pe- 
trarch, Boccaccio,  Chaucer,  Shakespeare, 
Milton,  Goethe,  Schiller,  Hugo,  Beranger, 
Scott,  Burns,  Shelley,  Byron  transmitted 
not  one  spark  of  their  genius  to  posterity." 
Originality  is  the  rarest  of  writer-qualities: 
almost  all  writers  are  echoes.  Originality 
seems  to  be  the  art  of  "making  what  is  not 
new  appear  to  be  new" — the  art  of  pouring 
out  of  one  bottle  into  another.  Holmes  says 
that  writers  are  cannibals:  they  live  upon 
each  others'  works.  The  striking  passages 
of  even  the  greatest  writers  are  notable  for 
the  sameness  of  thought  and  sentiment,  and 
the  very  finest  passages  of  prose  and  poetry 
are  often  only  the  embellished  recollections 
of  other  men's  productions.  "Genius  always 
kindles  its  own  fire,  but  it  often  does  this 
from  the  electric-spark  from  some  kindred 
soul."  Even  the  most  original  writers  have 


78       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

acknowledged  their  obligations  to  the  good 
things  that  were  hived  in  other  men's  books, 
and  they  dipped  without  stint  into  their 
dainty  honeycombs.  The  greatest  book- 
making  geniuses  have  been  omnivorous 
readers,  and  their  memories  were  hoops  of 
steel  that  turned  to  good  account  all  that 
they  could  hook  up :  Montaigne  helped  him- 
self to  thoughts  in  every  direction,  and  con- 
fessed that  he  weighed  his  borrowings,  but 
did  not  number  them;  Shakespeare  and 
Goethe  "milked  other  men's  minds  with- 
out reluctance,"  and  used  whatever  suited 
their  purposes  wherever  they  found  it,  prob- 
ably believing  that  a  thought  at  last  belongs 
to  the  man  who  best  expresses  it.  Through 
their  style,  these  borrowers  gave  blood  and 
color  to  their  borrowings;  but  their  borrow- 
ingsalsogave  an  ever-charming  complexion 
to  what  they  wrote.  Most  profit  and  pleas- 
ure can  be  had  from  writers  who  make  us 
think  most;  we  are  indifferent  whether  the 
silver  and  the  gold  they  work  in  is  newly- 


BOOK-MAKING  79 

dug  from  the  earth,  or  is  melted  up  from 
spoils.  A  fresh  writer  is  generally  worth 
reading,  even  if  both  his  thought  and  knowl- 
edge are  reflective.  A  writer  need  not  lament 
his  lack  of  originality,  but  he  should  have  a 
horror  of  being  dull. 

A  book  may  contain  a  hundred  pages, 
and  be  ninety-nine  pages  too  long:  "the 
world  has  myriads  of  books  wherefrom  the 
longest- winded  diver  shall  bring  up  no 
pearls,  nothing  but  his  handful  of  sand."  It 
is  in  books  the  chief  of  all  perfections  to  be 
concise,  and  artist-writers  as  rigorously  re- 
move all  surplusage  as  sculptors  remove  all 
superfluous  marble :  it  is  not "  a  Xerxes-army 
of  words  buta  compact  Greek-ten-thousand 
that  marches  down  safe  to  posterity";  Dean 
Swift  says  that,  were  all  books  reduced  to 
their  quintessence,  many  a  bulky  author 
should  make  his  appearance  in  a  penny-pa- 
per. It  is  only  the  man  who  utters  deepest 
truth  in  fewest  words  that  may  hope  to  en- 
dure. Shakespeare  says  that  brevity  is  the 


80       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

soul  of  wit,  and  that  an  honest  tale  speeds 
best  beingplainly  told.  We  may  need  a  book 
for  relaxation,  but  not  too  much  of  it;  we 
may  wish  to  know  something  about  a  sub- 
ject, but  not  too  much  about  it — with  all 
Carlyle's  keenness  for  the  shortages  of  oth- 
ers, he  never  perceived  his  own  shortage  in 
taking  a  score  of  his  books  just  to  preach  to 
the  world  the  gospel  of  silence!!  The  writer 
who  can  pack  a  bookful  in  a  sentence  al- 
ways does  most  towards  helping  his  fellows 
to  a  happy  life,  and  poets  live  because  they 
learned  this  ennobling  secret.  To  be  concise 
is  to  be  as  rare  as  a  genuine  poet:  Bacon  is 
the  only  English  master  of  concision,  with 
Emerson  as  a  good  second.  Emerson  is  the 
most  stimulating  of  all  the  American  writers 
because  he  has  so  admirably  expressed  in 
epigram  so  many  excellent  things;  he  is  one 
of  the  very  few  writers  of  any  age  that  can 
be  read  and  re-read  and  always  with  an  ac- 
cession of  light  and  power.  Every  genuine 
thought  can  be  lifted  out  of  its  setting,  and 


BOOK-MAKING  81 

shine  with  its  own  light;  and  the  writers  who 
have  looked  upon  their  art  as  a  religion  have 
striven  to  give  their  readers  such  thoughts. 
In  one  of  his  Edinburgh  Review  articles, 
Sydney  Smith  advises  that  men  who  write 
books  should  remember  that  longevity  has 
been  greatly  diminished  since  The  Deluge ; 
that  from  seven  or  eight  hundred  years,  be- 
fore The  Flood,  life  is  now  reduced  to  sev- 
enty or  eighty  years;  that  any  man  who 
writes  without  The  Deluge  before  his  eyes, 
and  handles  a  subject  as  if  men  could  lounge 
ten  long  years  over  apamphlet,  commits  one 
of  the  most  grievous  wrongs  against  human- 
ity. It  may  be  far  less  dishonest  to  pick  a 
man's  pocket  than  to  rob  him  of  his  time.  It 
is  the  man  who  can  tell  it  well  and  tell  it  so 
that  those  who  run  may  read  that  always 
gets  an  audience  that  keeps  awake ;  his  au- 
dience is  always  glad  to  hear  him,  and  they 
frequently  revert  to  him. 

A  man's  character  has  nothing  to  do  with 
his  writings:  if  we  are  searching  for  viceless 


82       BlBLIOPHILY,    OR    BoOKLOVE 

writers,  we  shall  die  with  hardly  one  of  those 
myriads  of  influences  for  good  which  come 
from  books.  It  is  the  good  in  men  that  must 
be  remembered;  the  sooner  the  perishable 
husk  in  which  it  has  been  enveloped  is  suf- 
fered to  perish,  the  sooner  we  shall  know 
them  as  they  really  are.  The  world's  best 
and  greatest  men  are  often  deluged  with 
what  the  good  /////*- people  abhor  as  the 
gravest  vices,  for  they  are  bom  with  stronger 
passions  than  ^>/tf/»-people,  and  are  tried  by 
greater  temptations.  It  is  evidence  of  an 
egregious  blockhead  to  heed  the  coarseness 
or  sensuality  or  abjectness  of  the  world's  men 
of  greatest  accomplishment  —  the  genius 
may  acknowledge  no  law;  still,  he  is  both 
wonderful  and  sacred.  The  sensible  man 
judges  a  writer  just  by  his  writings,  never 
by  his  character.  The  world  says  that  Rous- 
seau was  utterly  abject,  but  he  was  a  huge 
influence  for  good ;  it  says  that  Byron  was 
a  bad  man,  but  he  was  a  great  poet;  it  says 
that  Bacon  was  venal,  but  he  was  a  marvel- 


BOOK-MAKING  83 

ous  thinker.  There  was  much  said  and  done 
at  Mermaid  Tavern  which  Puritans  could 
not  approve ;  but  the  world  would  be  poorer 
to-day  had  it  not  been  for  Shakespeare  and 
Jonson  and  their  often  sack-full  boon-com- 
panions. Excellent  morality  may  be  taught 
by  a  man  who  has  no  morals  at  all,  just  as  a 
beautiful  stream  may  arise  in  a  very  impure 
fountain.  Lowell  asks  what  has  the  conduct 
of  Shakespeare  and  Goethe  and  Burns  to  do 
with  Genius.  He  says  that  genius  is  not  a 
matter  of  character  —  that,  like  Aladdin's 
Lamp,  itmaybe  sordid  in  the  externals;  but 
we  care  nothing  for  this  sordidness,  if  the 
touch  of  it  can  build  palaces  and  make  us 
rich  as  only  those  in  Dreamland  are  rich. 

THE  END 


($be  ttibrrsibc  prcstf 

CAMBRIDGE   .   MASSACHUSETTS 
U  .  S  .  A 


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